The Fable of the Hogwarts Adherent
by Mitzuki Amagiwa
Summary: Who was the Hogwarts Adherent? No one knew. She was a shadow in the halls, a mistress of good and righteousness, and most undoubtedly, not whom you think she is.


**The Fable of the Hogwarts Adheren**t

By Mitzuki Amagiwa

Summary: Who was the Hogwarts Adherent? No one knew. She was a shadow in the halls, a mistress of good and righteousness, and most undoubtedly, _not _whom you think she is.

* * *

Hermione had been having a rough day, which was putting it lightly. Her hair was completely dis-shelved from all the times she had gotten angry, disappointed, and totally and utterly humiliated today. What could she say? Her brown frizz was like a defense mechanism. When something went wrong, the mop of brown hair went up. And up, and up.

So, currently, Hermione Granger seemed to any standard passerby to be a banshee, barely by any means beautiful, considering that she was red in the face, her eyes had simply composed themselves into slits and stayed that way - for fear of being stabbed out by Hermione, of course - her 'defense mechanism' seemed like a very wild, very _living _angry halo around her head, and she was –literally- shouting curses at the top of her lungs to her two best friends, Harry Potter and Ronald Weasley.

After knowing The Hermione Granger for the past Six and a Half years (They couldn't _really _count it as seven years, because, honestly, they'd only truly befriended her after the whole 'Troll' incident during October their first year, and it still took a few weeks after that for them to _actually _begin to associate with her.) the boys were, relatively, used to Hermione's banshee days. On these days, they usually refused to let 'Mione' leave the Head dorms without putting her hair into a ponytail, or braids, or chopping her hair off entirely and such, but today had been incredibly different. Hermione had come out looking perfectly _fine _this morning, in fact, she had even been entirely _relaxed _this morning. Her hair had given her mood away. It had been lying wavy and long down her back, without a frizz anywhere, and had, indeed for a moment, seemed to young Mister Potter and young Mister Weasley to be absolutely, positively _perfect_ hair – Until they remembered it belonged to their best friend, in which they crunched their hormones and quite barbaric desire to touch it and walked down to breakfast.

It was breakfast, however, that started the entire fiasco.

At first, it had started with the typical 'Mudblood' jokes from the Slytherins, followed by a few harmless hexes and charms, followed by a few pranks bought from none other than Ron's older brothers' joke shop –Weasley's Wheezes, and dutifully accompanied by the typical Malfoy-Versus-Granger spat. That would have been relatively fine with all of them, because that was, sad to say, the typical Hogwarts school day. But it was neither the name-calling, nor the practices at real life Defense Against the Dark Arts ( A very _positive _way to think of hexes and charms being shot at you from behind), nor her typical brash on Malfoy that had set off her bad mood – It had been the pictures.

How they had _gotten _the bloody pictures, she would never know. But she _did _know one thing. It was darn near _impossible _for her to walk down the halls without at _least _three different boys whistling at her.

"And if it was Malfoy! _Oh! _He bloody well increase his life insurance, I can promise you that! That little ferret probably set up this whole thing to humiliate me! _Damn _him! _Damn _him to Hell!" Hermione yelled as she barged through the Room of Requirement doors, Harry and Ron following close behind so as not to get slapped in the face with the magical wooden door (which was really a _wall_, if you truly thought about it) as she slammed it shut, and watched in mired fascination as their best female friend immediately sank her face down into one of the pillows, screaming at the top of her lungs.

Harry was the first one to act as her screaming began to die down. "Hermione! _Hermione! _Get your face out of those pillows! You'll suffocate!" He rushed to her side as any good friend would do, and tried to lift her away from the couch of pillows the room had provided her with. But the fuzzy pink thing attached to her face would not come off. Rather, she was squashing it rather aggressively against any possible way of breathing. "_Hermione!_" Harry tried again, wrapping an arm around her waist as she began screaming and kicking, the other hand reaching for the pink pillow. When he finally managed to get a grip on the pillow, however, she flopped out of his arms and onto the hard, wooden floor. The black haired male sighed, watched her in exasperation for a moment before attempting to tug at her feet and free her from her attempt at suicide. What he found, to his surprise, was that she was stuck.

He rolled his eyes. "_Hermione!_" He cried, yanking harder, but she just kept screaming. "Take the bloody charm _off_." Harry tried to yank again, got nowhere, and turned to look at the red head, who was still staring, fascinated, at the scene before him. "Ron! Ron, help me, please."

The plea seemed to break Ron out of his stupor, and in a few moments, he was right beside Harry, attempting to lift Hermione off the ground.

"Bloody _hell_, Hermione!" Ronald cried, pulling again, getting a little bit of give from the charm. That was a definite pick-me-up. At least their incessant pulling was getting them _somewhere_. "Will you take the stupid spell _off_?"

There was a muffled cry of something that sounded akin to a 'No!' from the woman who still had her face buried in the pillow, and the charm came back full force, smacking her legs against the ground painfully, and dutifully dragging Harry and Ron down with them.

Ron rolled his eyes at the leg his hands were now stuck under, and slipped his fingers out before Hermione decided to cut them off. Harry was still trying to pry her up, so Ron rolled his eyes at his best friend too. "Come off it, mate. If Hermione wants to bloody well commit suicide over a few hot bikini pictures, let her do it." The red head stubbornly stated, standing up and brushing himself off. The raven-haired male was staring at him as though he had grown several heads all at once, contrary to the usual two. It really was quite a feat for Ron to have stooped so utterly low as to half admit those picture out there were even _moderately _decent, let alone admit he _enjoyed _them. Harry almost took out his wand and summoned a coffin up right then and there. It was simply not going to be _possible _for Ronald to walk out of the room alive. He had sealed his fate the moment he had said 'hot'.

Apparently Hermione thought so too.

"_WHAT?!_" She screeched, nearly flying up in order to stare Ronald down. Her defense mechanism was nothing short of putting Medusa to shame, and Ron froze as if she were Medusa herself. "Ronald Billius Weasley, you will take that comment back this _instant_, or Malfoy so help me I will _Avada _you so badly you won't be reincarnated for the next _eighty _of my next lives!"

Ron gave a very loud and audible gulp at the threat, for two very solid reasons: One, he knew – actually _knew _– Hermione could probably do _exactly _that, and Two, she had said 'or Malfoy so help me'. He knew he had to have crossed the line once those words had flown out of her mouth. 'Or Malfoy so help me'? Good Merlin, he really was digging his own grave. "Er," The red head sputtered, in an attempt to particularly not die tonight. "Well, Mione, see, I mean, the pictures weren't _that _bad an-"

Hermione screeched – quite literally, _screeched _– and threw herself at Ron, face contorted into nothing short of Rage. Harry's eyes nearly buggered out as the usually composed girl howled dolphin shrills of anger and started clawing Ron's face. This was a new development Ron nor Harry had ever seen before. Surely, they'd seen Hermione absolutely pissed at the world once or twice before, but usually she'd just look like a banshee and curse them out and scream and holler until her voice gave out – but _clawing _faces? _Hermione_? If Harry had been further removed from the situation and heard of it, he wouldn't have believed it himself. He never thought he'd live to see Hermione lose her composure, and from the way her nails were leaving markings down Ron's face, he glumly figured he wasn't going to live to tell the tale.

Harry blurted the only thing he could think of, in order to save his own skin: "We're going to be late for dinner!" He nearly chirped, which sounded incredibly abstract to the impending situation. Hermione halted her hand movements and glared at Harry in a way that would haunt him for the rest of his life. It would hold to be the particular reason Harry became such a wonderful and functional Auror, as he'd later explain in an interview with none other than Rita Seeker's cousin, the much more reliable Henrietta Seeker, in the exact phrase: "I've never seen anything scarier than Hermione Granger on a rampage; Dementor-two-faced-slug-horned-red-bearded-five-footed-malicious-fifteen-eyed-magical-dragons, if those existed, would have nothing on her."

To everyone's surprise, Hermione did stop her clawing. She took a deep breath, calmed herself and stood above the unconscious body of her red-haired best friend. "You're quite right." The Medusa incarnate grumbled, and gave a huff to no one in particular. "I have to face this. If I run, then they'll call me a coward, and Gryffindors are not _cowards_." Hermione was quite content in figuring out this thought all by herself, though she was quite a bit off her rocker. It was an improvement. Normally she wouldn't figure these things out until after she had screamed her voice out – but today had been different. She'd had Ron's face to take a bit of anger out on.

Harry made no comment to her discovery; he was a smart boy, and knew to follow his instincts. The-Boy-Who-Lived knew when to shut up in the presence of Hermione to stay The-Boy-Who-Was-Still-Living-With-All-Organs-Attached. He'd seen her castrate a boy with a spell once. Harry involuntarily cringed as the memory came back to him. Poor boy. Never to see his manhood again.

"Harry?" Hermione's voice asked innocently, and Harry dismissed the memory to take a proper look at his female best friend who, he had to admit, looked quite ravishing now that she was calm again. "You ought to ennerverate Ron, I said. Didn't you hear me?" Her chocolate brown eyes raised one brow and not the other, and Harry recited the response he knew she wanted to hear. They'd spent a whole week on 'Things Hermione Wants To Hear When She's In A Bad Mood', once. Harry had passed the class with flying colors. Ron failed.

"Oh, yes, 'Mione. I was just thinking of whether or not that'd be the best idea unless you had a head start to the Grand Hall. Just to, y'know, keep everyone from speculating that you had anything to do with the scratches on his face." It was dictated exactly as she had told him to dictate. Just the right lilts to certain words to give it an all around appealing sound. Hermione gave a smile.

"I suppose you're quite right, Mister Potter." Hermione looked to her red-headed best friend, to the door, and back to Ron once again. "Very well then. I will leave, you get Ronald back to his feet, and then wait a good ten minutes before descending down to the Great Hall. If someone asks, you two went to go remove those horrid bloody atr-" Hermione stopped herself before her ranting got too physically violent. Harry took a small step back. Smart boy. "-a_trocious-_" She squeaked, cleared her throat, and continued, "- pictures off the walls of the school. It doesn't matter whether or not you do it at all, really. I'm sure they'll be gone by the time you get downstairs."

Harry should have known something was up the moment those lines crossed her lips; Did Hermione ever make it through the day without some kind of scheme? She'd always been planning to have a hex or charm at hand for when things got a bit too rough for her liking, and to be entirely honest, she hadn't shot a single spell in the ferret's direction for the past week and a half – but Harry, so attuned to his best mate who was still very unconscious on the ground, had inherited a bit of lameness of the mind over the past few years and did not take a dimwitted note on the oddness of Hermione Granger's sentence. He would come to regret it later, of course. That was just how karma worked out for everyone who wasn't named The Hogwarts Adherent.

But, we're getting ahead of ourselves; let's resume the story at the point where Hermione has left the Room of Requirement, and a young Mister Potter and young – beginning to come around, wouldn't you know it? - Mister Weasley are all alone, still trying to burn the image of a very, very, _very _beautiful best friend of theirs who had the most... erm... _developed _chest they'd never seen on such a perfectly petite body. When Ron came to, they talked about it.

Needless to say, the boys didn't go down to the Great Hall for about a half-hour.

* * *

AN: Love it? Hate it? Mark it with a 'D'? Put it in the oven for some grammar teachings? :]


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